Opinion

Guest Commentary: Colorado's Higher ed support is shameful

President Obama spoke to students at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Tuesday about student loans and the cost of higher education. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Like anyone rational, I'm frustrated to see the University of Colorado's regents raise tuition yet again.

For five years, I taught at CU-Denver and other colleges, listening to students lament years of student loan repayments to come. And like them, I wondered what happens to the piles of cash taxpayers provide.

Then I did some research, and was astonished to learn that the CU system currently receives 5.7 percent of its operating budget from the state. Five point seven.

Turns out that funding for Colorado's public colleges and universities is at a historic low.

I taught at CU, earned my bachelor's there 15 years ago, and gained training that's helped me pursue a fulfilling and varied career.

In 1990, the state gave CU-Boulder $9,223 per student, adjusted for inflation. This year, it's $4,386.

The state's Joint Budget Committee recently voted to cut next year's budget less than originally feared, but it's still cutting further. Can we be surprised that tuition is rising? I don't think so. But we can be concerned.

We're squeezing an institution that's educated more than 358,000 Coloradans, preparing them for critical roles in business, engineering, arts, health, and community service. The CU system generates $6 billion annually for Colorado's economy, is a major driver of innovation and patents, and leads nationally in producing professionals for everything from NASA to the Peace Corps. And again, CU is joined by many important Colorado schools.

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So why is it so difficult to make room in the state budget for a fraction of what our institutions give us? It's hard, particularly in a recession, to admit we need to pony up. It's more comforting to believe long-standing myths. Here are just a few:

No. 1: Tuition is high because teachers make too much. I interviewed for a private-sector job where my graduate degree in communications was worth $76,000, but as a teacher I accepted $32,000, summers on, no benefits.

No. 2: Administrators make poor decisions. I admit I can speak to this myth less, but I did see painful cuts made to minimize tuition increases. CU's figures show administrative overhead 44 percent lower than comparable American universities. Contrast that efficiency with ...

No. 3. For-profit institutions are more efficient than public ones. I also taught at a for-profit college, and such schools are frequently accused of fraud. These much more expensive "free-market" schools are funded up to 90 percent or more by federal loans, grants, and GI Bill funds, far more public money than our public colleges, and a chunk of that scarce higher education cash goes to shareholders, not students.

Public institutions like CU are the most cost-effective. They're not perfect, but by any objective measure they're doing very well amid harsh financial realities, so imagine what they could do with proper support. And, yes, any institution that gets public money should be publicly accountable.

I can think of improvements, most notably better support for low-income students, minorities, and veterans, and not just because they have the most to gain from education and the most to lose when tuition rises. These are also the students targeted by for-profit colleges. In short, our failure to adequately fund state schools helps create the market for the for-profit sector, leaving students — and the taxpayers who subsidize them — paying more for dubious results.

Tenure could also use reform. Schools should be able to fire bad teachers. Yet I'm an example of why tenure shouldn't be completely eliminated: my non-tenure job at the for-profit ended when I wrote a column similar to this one. Public colleges created tenure to prevent such retaliation, and academic free speech should be protected.

If we want to have a say on these or any improvements, if we expect tuition to stay reasonable, and if we want the billions in benefits from an educated population, we need to make the decision to support higher education.

One-day event to run slide down University HillIt's not quite the alternative mode of transportation that Boulder's used to, but, for one day this summer, residents will be able to traverse several city blocks atop inflatable tubes.

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